BOOK REVIEW

DIPLOMATIC SUITES NEWS AGENCY (DSNA)

Book Review - *Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain* 

-by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Have your Understanding of Consciousness, Emotions, and Memory Revolutionized.

We are taking a glimpse into another epic book💃. With seven key ideas, Lisa Feldman takes us on an exploration of the human brain that debunks numerous misconceptions along the way. It explains what brains are actually for, how they develop, what makes them unique, and why they're often one step ahead of everything you do.

Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University who also has appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, clearly knows her neuroscience. Showing her Darwinian credentials at the start, the question as to why our brains evolved, she writes, “is not answerable because evolution does not act with a purpose - there is no ‘why’”. Nor are our brains primarily for thinking, contrary to popular belief. Their main purpose is to act as a command centre - Feldman Barrett debunks. Barrett writes, our brain contains no new parts, and its neurons operate no differently than those of a fish or flea. It is not even the most highly evolved—only superbly evolved for what humans do. 

Humans are great thinkers, but the author maintains that brains did not evolve to think but to “control your body…by predicting energy needs before they arrive so you can efficiently make worthwhile movements and survive.” Readers will agree that our senses provide essential information for prediction but may be surprised when Barrett explains that experience (i.e., memory) plays an equally vital role. A glass of water relieves your thirst immediately, but it takes 20 minutes for the water to reach your bloodstream. Your brain, predicting correctly, turns off your thirst.

Other debunked myths include the idea that your brain ‘lights up’ with activity or stores ‘memories like computer files’. These are simply metaphors. Indeed, but they are useful ones, especially as she goes on to tell us that the brain is a network of 128 billion neurons connected “as a single, massive, and flexible structure.” That’s hard to comprehend, but a lot easier when likened to an airport hub, with smaller airports, interconnecting flights, delays, fuel, pilots, runway holdups and so on. 

She has an interesting chapter on the development of baby brains and why distinguishing between nature and nurture is unhelpful: “the two are like lovers in a fiery tango”, she writes, perhaps a little over-enthusiastically.A

* PREDICTIVE BRAIN*

Another chapter deals with the importance of the predictive brain, using memory and the environment to help it launch the next action, even if it sometimes gets it wrong. Favouring self-protection over accuracy, “your brain is wired to initiate actions before you’re aware of them. That is kind of a big deal,” she writes. 

The importance of socializing, using language to communicate, the need for creativity, why personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator are “pretty dubious’ (we are the worst judges when it comes to answering questions about ourselves), and how different cultures think differently about almost everything.

It’s absorbing, thought-provoking stuff, mainly because rather than attempting to simplify the science of the brain - an almost impossible task - what she is really interested in is the concept of social reality - and “social reality is a uniquely human ability”. The narrative is so short and sweet that most readers will continue to the 35-page appendix, in which the author delves more deeply, but with no less clarity, into topics ranging from teleology to the Myers-Briggs personality test to “Plato’s writings about the human psyche." Outstanding popular science.

This book is a must read for neuroscience enthusiasts, people interested in the field of psychology and anyone curious about human evolution. However, sure to intrigue casual readers as well.

Rate: 4.5

🖋️Mabel💞